Fox Helps Gov. Perry Hype Texas While Ignoring Its Problems

Fox News carried water for Republican Governor Rick Perry by giving a new ad campaign to persuade businesses to relocate to Texas free exposure three times during one show and ignoring problems with Texas' economic environment.

On June 10, Perry launched an ad campaign in New York and Connecticut that framed Texas as a "[l]and of opportunity, home of creative renegades, where dreams become reality" in an effort to lure businesses to his state. According to the Texas Tribune, the New York ad buy "dwarfs" Governor Perry's previous efforts to publicize "his message of low taxes, predictable regulations, fair courts and a skilled workforce to employers" in California and Illinois. The Texas Tribune also reported that Perry is visiting Connecticut and New York in coming days to push the ad's message.

Fox has previously helped Perry connect his deregulatory and anti-tax policies to job creation, and the network continued to uncritically promote Perry's agenda by playing his new adthreetimes on Fox & Friends. Co-host Brian Kilmeade relayed Perry's message that "you can be bigger and better in Texas" and noted that Perry "wants to highlight the state's low taxes and fewer regulations," and co-host Gretchen Carlson later repeated the statements verbatim.

But Fox's promotion of Perry's policies ignored how Texas' economic environment affects workers in the state.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Texas' poverty rate of 17 percent is 2.7 percentage points higher than the national average. The Bureau of Labor Statistics further reports that the state has the second highest percentage of workers paid at or below the minimum wage, at 7.5 percent.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Texas has the 7th largest income disparity in the nation. Between the late 1990s and mid-2000s, the state's poorest 20 percent of households saw, on average, a 10 percent decrease in income as incomes for the wealthiest Texans rose 10.7 percent.

Gallup recently reported that Texas had highest percentage of uninsured adults in 2012, for the fifth year in a row. With 28.8 percent of adult Texans uninsured, the state set the record for highest percentage recorded since Gallup began tracking the figure in 2008, widenening its gap over Louisiana to 4.8 percentage points.